SA Symphony with Gaffigan, Children's Chorus
High-definition, low-ego Beethoven and Ives
April 12, 2008Acknowledging the applause after a superb performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 with the San Antonio Symphony on Friday night in the nearly full Majestic Theater, guest conductor James Gaffigan held the score in front of his face.
That literally self-effacing gesture was emblematic of a conducting performance that, throughout the evening, offered no interpretive backflips, no look-at-me details, no prestidigitatory miracles -- just an admirably clear conduit for the music the composers had (in most cases posthumously) entrusted to him.
That is not to say that Gaffigan's conducting lacked individual character. I think I could pick his Beethoven Fifth out of a crowd on the basis of his incisive rhythms, his careful balances, the unimpeded flow of his lines, the graceful but unfussy shaping of phrases, the comfortableness of the orchestra's response to his baton. The orchestra played beautifuly, with a rich but transparent ensemble blend. The upper strings may have fallen a smidgen short of their cleanest sound, but they -- especially the celli and double basses -- delivered the gruff little whirlwinds of the scherzo's trio with crisp precision. The horns were glorious.
In the opening work, Charles Ives's Symphony No. 3, "The Camp Meeting," Gaffigan conducted without a baton and elicited an aptly intimate, finely nuanced performance. Like his Beethoven, Gaffigan's Ives was fluid, brisk and light on its feet. His balances fully revealed the American master's patented merging of exploratory modernism with apple-pie normalness.
The Children's Chorus of San Antonio, prepared by Marguerite McCormick and singing from memory, joined the orchestra in five of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Folk Songs of the Four Seasons and in the living Canadian composer Imant Raminsh's "Songs of the Lights," set to English translations of poetic Algonquin and Navajo texts. Scored for strings, solo flute and solo glockenspiel with children's voices, Raminsh's music sometimes resembles the repeating rhythmic patterns of Steve Reich, sometimes the wild, bright harmonies of Olivier Messiaen, but ultimately the idiom is his own and closely suited to the texts.
The chorus was sometimes strained at the high end, mainly in the Raminsh songs, and had a few tentative moments -- this was a lot of material to memorize -- but for the most part the kids sang out cleanly, with strong projection and clear diction.
Gaffigan had a very nice way with Vaughan Williams's veryEnglish folk rhythms and burnished surfaces.
Not yet 30 years old, Gaffigan has been associate conductor of the San Francisco Symphony since 2006 and shares the personable quality of its immensely popular music director, Michael Tilson Thomas. He didn't seem flustered by several bawling babies, people clambering to their seats during the music, or the applause between movements -- happily, there were a lot of newbies in the crowd. The ovation after the first movement of the Beethoven drew the ad lib: "Believe it or not, there's more."
If there's more to be heard from Gaffigan, here, I won't object.
Mike Greenberg
